>>> fresh Emacs instance. There's no reason the "package manager" could not >>> spawn a separate Emacs in batch-mode as a sub-job to do the compilation. >> Very lightly tested version: > This uses the Emacs executable on the exec path, which might not be the > correct one. > I'm wary of making such a fundamental change to package.el without first > exploring possible package-specific work-arounds.
Yes, this should not a candidate for 24.1. > Could problematic packages use an eval-when-compile form to forcibly > load the correct version of the required file? I think it's a sufficiently general problem that we might want to provide some special support for a good solution (tho again, I doubt there's something simple&safe enough to be a candidate for 24.1). E.g. we could add to bytecomp.el the ability to force `require' to reload a package if it's not already loaded from the file that locate-library returns. Stefan